And She Shall Know (No) Fear
by Mislagnissa
Summary: "She didn't deserve a friend like me: someone with a congenital, incurable heart condition that will kill me before I graduate from high school. I couldn't break her heart like that. Ironically, that wasn't what killed me. I was so busy moping about it on the way home that I didn't see the car." Mundane AU, Ghost Fiction.


My name is Homura Akemi. This is the story of how I died… and what I did afterward.

Confused?

Let's start at the beginning…

I was an orphan living in Mitakihara Town. My parents had died in a plane crash while coming home from a business vacation. Don't feel sorry for me, it gets worse from there.

I've spend most of my life in hospitals, as I suffer from a congenital, incurable heart condition that will kill me before I graduate from high school. I'm a dead girl walking.

Ironically, that wasn't what killed me.

Madoka… that silly, loveable girl. She was the first friend I made in a long time. While everyone else just treated me like the new girl of interest, she saw me as an actual person. She didn't have many friends, just a small circle consisting of Sayaka Miki, Hitomi Shizuka, Kyousuke Kamijou, and upperclassman Mami Tomoe.

She had invited me to come shopping tomorrow. It would have been my first real taste of living in a while.

But while outwardly I told her that would be great, inwardly I was seething. She didn't deserve a friend like me, I thought, someone who'll be dead in a few years. I couldn't break her heart like that.

I was so busy moping on the way home that day that I didn't see the car. The driver was a drunk, and probably didn't see me either.

My life ended in bloody smear on the road. But I continued to exist. As cliché as it sounds, I became a ghost.

I didn't realize I was dead at first. I continued visiting the hospital that I spent most of my time in. None of the staff noticed me, except as an inexplicable feeling of eeriness, cold spots, and the occasional fluctuation in equipment. A few of the other terminal patients in my ward could see me, sometimes, usually only when high on morphine.

I kept going home and watched television and tried to do nonexistent homework. I kept standing by the phone, waiting for Madoka to call.

I even kept going to school. But Madoka didn't notice me. And every day school ended, I would walk back home, back to the road where I died, and I would relive my death, over and over until the sun came up and I started the daily routine all over again.

And every moment of every day, I would dream. I would dream of days long past, days that could've happened, and days that never will. I saw things that made no sense, like a man selling cheese and a second moon in the night sky. And just when the dream was about to end, I'd be presented with a hallway, at the end of which were two doors. I'd never made a decision.

I went on like this for what I would later learn was around forty-six days. What finally woke me up was the storm.

It wasn't a literal storm. It was a storm that only the dead could perceive. To this day, I still don't know what caused it. It might've been a plane crash in the Liveworld, a fire that spread through several buildings, an earthquake, something equally tragic.

I was wandering though the hospital's backyard, where patients were having picnics, and I didn't notice the winds at first. I was safely protected behind a gauzy shroud that had covered me from head to toe ever since I left my body. I don't understand how something so flimsy could have protected me from those awful winds, strong enough to cut your skin like a razorblade, but it did.

What woke me up were the screams of the living. Within a dozen blocks of the epicenter of the accident, hundreds of people died. Not all of them because of the accident itself, because that storm didn't just carry flaying winds, but it also carried _them_. The living were never aware of the role _they_ played.

I never did see _them_ clearly, but from the brief glimpses I caught, I could see one with a maw full of broken, rotting teeth, another with a pair of eyeless sockets that oozed blood, and a third with fingernails like razors. _They_ didn't notice me at first, but as I pulled off my burial shroud, they began to slow, and stare at me.

I didn't realize what _they_ were at first, since I was so busy with realizing where I was. But when I saw _them_ sauntering toward me, hopping and jumping in zigzags, I turned around and ran. _They_ didn't follow.

The hospital wall was like air as I passed through it, effortlessly. I found myself back in the ward, and I could see a few other people panicking and looking for places to hide. I just huddled in my old room, now home to someone else, and waited.

When the roaring of the wind finally died down, and I got up, and looked at the new world I found myself in.

The hospital was much the same as it was before, but everything was blurred, like a fuzzy camera. Sounds were dulled, smells were wrong, and I couldn't really feel anything when I tried to touch it.

I walked out of the hospital, ignoring a few people, ghosts, running past me, looking through the baroque wreckage left behind by the storm. I couldn't care less about that. I looked up at the skyline of Mitakihara.

The city seemed normal enough, though I seemed to remember that there used to be one more skyscraper that I was seeing now. The sky was a dull grey, and a few stacks of smoke rose from the horizon, from the fires left by the accident that provoked all this. The sun, once so bright, was just a dull disk, like a flashlight in the daytime. It was like the world had been put through a washed-out, sepia-toned, blurred photoshop filter.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" I asked myself.

_So what do we do now?_

I walked back into the hospital.

Being dead was nothing like I'd thought it would be. I was raised Catholic, you see, and so I was taught since I was young that virtuous people who died would enter Heaven. Since I refused to believe this existence was Heaven (just think if it was!), that meant either that I was not virtuous or that my faith was wrong. Of course, I was also taught people who weren't virtuous would end up in Hell, and if this was supposed to be Hell, it was nowhere near as painful and hot as I'd assumed Hell would be.

_If you're so curious about whether this is Heaven or Hell, why not ask one of the other ghosts here? I'm sure they'd be willing to help you._

Oh, and there was another thing about being dead. I was now hearing voices. Well… _a_ voice, which sounded just like my own and seemed to be trying its best to offer me advice.

Well, best to find out what's going on before I go off half-cocked. Lucky for me, there was another ghost standing in the waiting room. Like everything else, he was blurred, but looking closer I noticed that he was partly transparent. He seemed to be about my age, but it was hard to tell since he was facing the wall.

I walked over to him, and was about to tap his shoulder when I noticed he was covered from head to toe in a gauzy shroud, just like I had been. I paused.

"Hello? Can you help me?"

"He can't hear you. He's a sleeper."

I turned to see who spoke. It was a young woman, dressed in a nun's habit, though her face was partially obscured by shadow, and I could see... _cobwebs_ on her shoulders. Oddly, she wasn't blurry like everything else, but stood out like a beacon. (In fact, the same was true of the scavengers I saw running about after the storm.)

"What do you mean he's a sleeper?"

"You're new here, right?" I nodded.

"See dear, there are two kinds of ghosts in the Deadworld: the _sleepers_ and the _arisen_. Sleepers are trapped in a fugue: they haunt their anchors and are barely sentient most of the time. But you and I are arisen, or _wraiths_ in common parlance. We're different because our shrouds were lifted: we know we're dead and realize that the world has moved on without us. You shouldn't mess with him, dear," she added, "Sleepers don't tend to react well to others, and the Order has a strict prohibition on waking them."

Ah. So that would explain it. For some reason, I can see the arisen clearer than the living and sleepers.

"The Order?" I asked.

"An organization of bureaucrats and theocrats. They run this part of town, so you should be careful of them."

"You're not part of the Order?" She shrugged.

"No, my dear, I'm a Believer. I follow the one true God."

"And the Order follows?"

"Here they generally venerate Emma-O."

"So the Order follows Emma-O, and the Believers follow God?" She shook her head.

"Not strictly speaking. The Order calls any faith other than theirs Believers. Some Believers, like my own circle, follow God, and others in the town follow traditional Buddhist beliefs."

"Is this place Hell?" I couldn't restrain myself, I just blurted it. She smiled at me.

"No my dear, this isn't Hell. Wraiths call the world we live in the Deadlands, the Deadworld, and other fanciful names. But it's not really a different world: we live alongside the living, even if they can't see us most of the time. It is the belief of me and my circle that we exist in a state of Purgatory, because we refuse to let go of our lives and submit ourselves to God."

"So I could get out of here? Pass on like in those cheesy movies?" She nodded and frowned.

"You can, but it is a long and difficult road. You may not want to follow it, and if you do, you may fail. Many others have."

Just then, I heard someone whistling a tune. It was the boy I had tried to talk to. I had forgotten about him. I noticed, idly, that there were slight bruises on his neck. I glanced back at the nun.

"Who is this boy?" The nun sighed.

"It's a tragic story. He was a talented violinist, but after an accident destroyed the nerves in his hand, the poor boy gave into despair and took his own life." My eyes widened.

"Wait, you don't mean… Kamijou Kyousuke?" The nun raised an eyebrow.

"You know him?" I gasped in shock.

"No, but… I was going to be introduced to him, before I…" The nun nodded.

"I understand. Do you wish to talk about it?" I shook my head.

"If you wish to speak with me again, you may visit the hospital chapel. I can usually be found there. My name is Elsa Maria."

"Homura. Homura Akemi. It was nice meeting you." I sniffled.

"You as well. Take care." She nodded, then turned and walked away.

_You certainly handled that well. Too bad about Kyousuke, though. I wonder how Sayaka took it. Madoka did say she fancied him._

Oh God, I thought, what about them?!


End file.
